Bathrooms and showers stalls are often provided with tiled floors especially in higher end homes. In shower stalls, a drain is typically placed in or near the center of the stall and the floor is sloped slightly towards the center drain to ensure the water runs into the drain as opposed to sitting on the floor or seeping into the structure at the intersection of the floor with the stall walls.
As can be appreciated, tiling a floor that slopes in different directions towards the center of the stall can be difficult and time consuming especially if localized reversed slopes and other slope anomalies are to be avoided. The problem can be especially acute when large-sized tiles (6″×6″, 8″×8″, 12″×12″ and larger) are utilized. Often it is necessary to cut the tiles on a diagonal where two slopes running in different directions intersect.
Elongated drains that are located at one edge of a stall thereby facilitating a floor that slopes primarily in a single direction are known. However, they tend to be best suited for commercial or industrial applications and often require installation by skilled craftsmen to ensure the drain's top surface is effectively even or level with that of the surrounding floor. For instance in many commercial applications like in communal showers, elongated drains are molded into the concrete pans of the expansive floors and are covered with perforated grates. The sides and bottom surfaces of these molded-in drains are then often covered in tiles. Such exacting and time consuming construction make these drains economically unsuitable for use in most residential structures.
Cost-effective prefabricated elongated drains suitable for use in residential structures are just not readily available in the marketplace. Elongated drain assemblies that have been proposed are often not amenable for use by do it yourselfers, who are mechanically astute but lack the experience of tradesmen. Furthermore, prior art assemblies even if amenable for installation by tradesmen are either or both prohibitively expensive and prohibitively expensive to install. These cost considerations ameliorate any potential cost advantages of installing a titled shower with a pan that is sloped in a single direction instead of multiple directions.